28.2 The Substance of Love
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of Love. But love is a very specific quality, and the context of love in our lives is marriage. And in marriage, the highest action of love is to set forth our souls for one another, that is, to give of ourselves to each other in certainty and in intimacy.
The everlasting Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of marriage union. It is a union of knowing God AND knowing one another. Those two cannot ever be separated. We know one another only by knowing God first, yet as we know God, immediately, we know one another.
Marriage Covenant
Marriage is the deepest level of Covenant we experience in this present today. Thus, as we explore Covenant, we will be combining both sides of Covenant all the way through, our own marriage union with the Father through Christ, each one of us as individuals, yet always joined together with our marriage union with one another as the expression of Christ.
Jesus said something strange that makes most of our brethren see the future “in heaven” as isolated individualism, but that’s only because they do not know God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven (Matthew 22:30).
Sons of God
That’s how Matthew remembered Jesus’ words, but Mary (the one who gave Luke much of his information) remembered those words slightly differently. Those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; nor can they die anymore, for they are like the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection (Luke 20:35-36).
Many, then, take from this the thought that we will not know our earthly wives/husbands in the way we do here today. To some that might seem a “blessing”; to others, including myself, that would be an unimaginable loss.
May Be One
Remember, however, that Jesus said, “My words are Spirit and they are Life.”
Here is our constant state “in the resurrection.” That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us – And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one (John 17:21-23 – condensed).
“Glory” is the intimacy of marriage union. Remember that to the pure all things are pure. We will know one another in the same levels of intimacy that God has reserved for just two as one in this present today.
Pleasures Forevermore
You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). – David was speaking of Jesus, that is, of Christ our only life.
You see, in the resurrection, from that overwhelming moment on, we will know the Father utterly together with us. Never again will any shadow darken His REAL and TANGIBLE presence and Person inside of us, part of us, fellowshipping with us, expressing Himself through us. Our present experience of the sweetest moments of marriage union as husbands and wives are only a dim reflection of this most intimate knowing of Father in which we will live.
Fellowship Together
That you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3). John is speaking, however, of our present relationship with the Father, AND with Jesus, AND with one another.
Nevertheless, although our love and knowledge of one another will only increase through the time of the fulfillment of Tabernacles in the Church, yet God limits the full measure of this fellowship now only to husband and wife. In the resurrection, that limitation will be removed. We will know one another in the same way and to the same degree that we know the Father.
Behold Your Son
You see, Jesus was giving only a small part of the picture, framed in that way only to counteract the foolish, small, and cynical minds of the Sadducees (who were the wealthiest Jewish noblemen who had embraced all things Greek). Jesus would never have given the complete picture to such twisted and worldly men.
But on the cross, it was a different matter. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home (John 19:26-27).
Speaking the Substance of Love
Jesus was not, in this hour of His passion, giving us a nice illustration for Mother’s Day. Yes, He was providing for His mother, whom He loved (and remember that John was likely just 20 years old). But Jesus, less than ten hours earlier, had spoken the New Creation into existence. And less than five hours earlier, Jesus had drawn you and me into Himself in Gethsemane. In less than four hours, the old creation would cease forever.
Jesus was certainly not speaking regarding the appearance of the old, but rather, regarding the substance of the New. Jesus was speaking into these two closest to Him, and into us as well, the Substance of Love.
As My Own Mother
And in speaking these words to John and Mary, Jesus was speaking this same relationship between all sons and all mothers, between all fathers and all daughters, inside the New Creation.
My daughter is getting married this June in Canada. On my return trip, I am planning to stop along the way to spend time with readers of these letters. To prepare, I am presently communicating with three dear sisters who are so lacking in worldly things that they don’t even have a place for me to pitch my cot. I can assure you of this. As the Lord makes it possible for me to spend time with each one, I see each one of them as my own mother – and far more so.
As He IS
Now, don’t get me wrong; I am definitely not somebody. I am unable to maintain long-distance relationships, and I am very limited in any ability to create short-distance relationships. If I lived in the same community with these sisters in Christ, they would see all my stumbling and lack.
That makes no difference to me, for I do not call forth myself, but Christ. As He IS, so am I. And since the Lord Jesus honors these dear sisters above all as His own mother, so also do I. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you (John 15:12). These words are absolute, utterly practical, and very, very real!
A Full Disclosure
Now, I must make a full disclosure to you. These two words, “God is a farmer,” and “our marriage union together,” arose inside of me as I have written this concluding chapter of Symmorphy III: Kingdom. These two concepts come out of my present heart, my present knowledge of God, the present word I am sharing. I did NOT plan to place them here. I did not even remember “God is a farmer” until I needed to write the bit where that line appears.
Nevertheless, I have heard these lines before. In February, 1979, at the Headwaters Convention in British Columbia, Sam Fife preached this same word as I am sharing with you in this session. It was the last word I heard him preach.
Such Sorrow
We were 500 people crammed into a room that legally had space for 200. We sat on backless wooden benches with our knees in the backs of those in front of us. We had no thought for such a thing, for the power of God held us in the mighty word being spoken into us.
As he preached, for a moment Sam Fife looked straight at me, recognizing me from having spent time with him just a few months before in sunny Florida. I have never seen or known such sorrow on the face of any preacher as Sam Fife shared with us his lack of hope, that few, so very few hearing him that day could hear or receive the word of the revelation of Jesus Christ that gripped his heart.
Incapable of Knowing
Sam Fife was killed in a plane crash just two months later. That look of the deepest sorrow was my last brief memory.
No, none of us who heard him preach that February could possibly have understood what that vision meant. But some of us did hold it in our hearts, not understanding how such a reality could ever belong to us. We listened to that word years later, in the early 1990’s, at the Blueberry Christian Community, but I know we did not understand it even then. Yet one night, God gave me a dream in which I knew my full and present union with the Lord Jesus Christ. As I shared that dream with the family at Blueberry, there was such a witness, but neither they nor I were capable of knowing what it meant.
Come Full Circle
Union with Christ was something we could not know. And indeed, the move ministry had thrown out the revelation of Jesus Christ soon after Sam Fife’s death, that is, NOT until we ourselves had defeated sin by proving full outward obedience, that is, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil barring the way to the tree of life.
And so it has come full circle. Out from my present knowledge of my full union with the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord has caused me to know this same word that I received into my heart from age 20 to 21, though I could not know then what it meant.
I have faithfully given you that word in this Kingdom text.
God Is a Farmer
God brings forth all things by planting seeds in the earth, and then by sending the rain, His Holy Spirit, to nurture that life until it grows into a full-fruited plant. And so He has done with me; the seed planted in my earth now forty years ago has come up from the ground, grown full and strong, and is, by God’s grace, bearing its fruit 100 fold.
But I am not the only one who heard that word Sam Fife preached out of the deepest of sorrows, 38 years ago. And I wait on God with full expectation that others who heard that same word and kept it close, allowing the Spirit of God to hover over it all these years, will also stand forth and walk together with me in the planting of that word AGAIN in others.
And you also with me.
Marriage Union
Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready. – Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb! (Revelation 19:7 & 9).
There are two parts to this marriage union. There is the woman who enters into the full knowledge of union with Jesus, yes, but there are also her sons, seized into God. For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you (Isaiah 62:5). For those who have ears to hear, let them hear. We are not the Bride entering into union with Jesus, we are that expression of Jesus entering into union with His Bride.
Two Or Three
I want to refer back, now, to a concept I set before you in Session 19: “The Tabernacles Church.” And remember, we are speaking entirely inside of Romans 8:29 – symmorphosed together with Jesus as the revelation of Father.
“The core of every Christian community scattered across the whole earth and found among all peoples will be at least two or three immortal, incorruptible sons of God. – who are examples to the rest, Father’s heart, life laid down and love poured out. These will know Father, maybe in a way that none entering into the full Feast of Tabernacles later on will ever know Him” (from 19.2 and 19.3).
Knowing One Another
“These will KNOW Father” also translates directly and always into “these will know one another.” Towards all others, we will be life laid down and love poured out, but to one another, as we are these same incorruptible sons of our Father, we walk together inside a fellowship and intimacy so deep, so inside of one another, that the marriage union of husband and wife in the present today cannot even compare.
When I am suggesting that God is offering to you and me, if we are interested, the knowing of the deepest levels of His Heart forever in a way few else will know, I am also suggesting, just as much, that God is offering to us that same knowing of one another inside the deepest levels God is “capable” of expressing.
Soul with Soul
That they may be perfected in one. The full intimacy of marriage union. Friends with friends, walking arm in arm, loving one another with a pure heart fervently, in the deepest levels of knowing one another. In utter trust. In total abandonment. Without strings attached; without any inhibition. The fullest expression that soul with soul could ever be.
Yet that same knowing of one another inside of each little group or gathering together, will be the same across all the sons who share this wondrous place inside Father’s heart.
A Kingdom of Love
That the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them (John 17:26b). The deepest intimacies of marriage union together, the sweetest joys of entwinement.
Love one another as I have loved you. – And we also, together. Yet this reality of the deepest intimacies of fellowship begins for us, not with the resurrection, but inside of the fulfillment of Tabernacles Day One.
It is a Kingdom of Love.